That’s because black and Latino drivers perceive they are more likely than whites to be targeted for traffic stops simply because of skin color, even though police agencies here say they don’t practice racial profiling, and veteran black cops say they’re as likely as their white colleagues to be accused of picking on motorists of color.

Yet statistics compiled by the state of Illinois show that black drivers in Rockford and across the state indeed are more likely than white motorists to be stopped and subjected to vehicle searches. In Rockford in 2012, 42 percent of traffic stops were of nonwhite drivers — even though nonwhites make up 35 percent of the estimated driving population here, according to the most recent Illinois Traffic Stop Study.

The study concluded that nonwhite drivers were 21 percent more likely to be pulled over in the city, down from a peak of 63 percent in 2010. The state is expected to publish the 2013 numbers on July 1.

“Anybody black recognizes that when you go outside of Rockford — and inside of Rockford — you’re always subject to being stopped for DWB — driving while black,” said Pastor Rickey Bates of Promise of Life Church in Rockford. “If they look like they’re under 25, under 30, and there is more than two of them in the car, you’re stopping them. And everybody recognizes that.”

The issue of racial profiling is back on the public agenda because a state law requiring collection of data on race and traffic stops is set to expire Jan. 1. A bill on its way to Gov. Pat Quinn for his signature would extend the practice until 2019.

Geography, not race

For police, the disparity in the number of black and Latino motorists stopped is a reflection of geography.

Like many chiefs, Rockford Police Chief Chet Epperson attributes the phenomenon to a larger police presence in high-crime areas, which also have higher populations of blacks and Latinos. Police tend to make more traffic stops in high-crime areas in an effort to make arrests for more serious violations, such as possession of illegal weapons or narcotics.

Page 2 of 6 - “We are going to stop people for headlight, taillight, for license plate violation because the research has proven the more cars you stop, the higher propensity you’re going to have to get a handgun out of a car,” Epperson said.

The Illinois Association of Chiefs of Police opposed the continued collection of the data, citing the time spent on paperwork and the problems that occur when race is misidentified. But Epperson welcomes the analysis. He said it’s an opportunity for police to be transparent with their work, adding that racial profiling has not been an issue for the Rockford Police Department.

“In my tenure, I think we’ve had two complaints of racial profiling,” Epperson said. “They’ve both been vetted out internally and found not to be true.”

Mistrust of police

The perception that law enforcement targets blacks and Latinos is pervasive and adds to a common mistrust of police in the nonwhite community. More than half of Americans believe that racial profiling is widespread during traffic stops, according to a 2004 Gallup survey, with Latinos and blacks more likely than whites to say that the practice is widespread. About 67 percent of blacks and 63 percent of Latinos surveyed said they believe racial profiling is widespread in traffic stops. About 50 percent of whites felt the practice was widespread.

In a separate poll, conducted by Gallup in 2013, about one in four black men under 35 said they had been treated unfairly by police because of their race within the past 30 days.

Patrol officers say they’re accustomed to accusations of racial profiling. The vitriol directed at police can intensify when the officer is black. Rockford Park District Police Chief Theo Glover, a former deputy chief in Rockford’s department and the highest-ranking African American in local law enforcement, said he was accused of profiling on several occasions during his career as a Rockford patrol officer.

“I’m not stopping them because of their race, and everybody that I oversee or anybody that I’m in charge of is not doing that as well because I would come down hard on them to no end,” Glover said.

“I knew no officer that was racially profiling anybody in the area that they worked. It’s simply the area that they worked.”

Judging by looks

Bates, the Promise of Life pastor, said the type of car also plays a role in traffic stops. He and his wife were pulled over more often during the period she drove a Jaguar, Bates said.

“I can’t even remember the amount of times we got stopped driving a Jag,” he said. “If I was on what they consider the wrong side of town, which is my side of town, and I’m driving too nice of a car, then I’m getting stopped.”

Page 3 of 6 - West-sider Maurio Beasley, 35, had a similar experience.

“I had a Cadillac CTS. I got rid of it because I was getting pulled over left and right,” said Beasley, whose father is black and mother is Italian. “I felt like they were pulling me over for no reason because they never gave me tickets.”

Beasley’s arms are blanketed with tattoos, the majority of which he got 18 years ago when he was a young basketball player modeling his game and image after former NBA player Allen Iverson. When he flashes a smile, it reveals gold caps on his lateral incisors.

“I know I have the gold teeth and I have the tattoos, so I fit that description. But, if you know me, I’m not that person,” said Beasley, whose tattoos include a basketball player and designs that display the names of several family members, including his parents, fiancée and son. “My appearance, it throws people. I understand that, but I don’t think you should judge somebody by what they look like.”

He admits he deserved some tickets — he’s been cited for speeding and for not wearing a seatbelt. But most of the times he’s been pulled over have been without cause, Beasley said. He said he’s been pulled over so frequently he can’t keep track of exactly how many times. He often is let go with no citation or warning, but sometimes is asked for permission to search the vehicle.

“A lot of times when I got pulled over, I just don’t get it ... I always get, ‘It’s a random stop. We do random stops out here,’ ” Beasley said. “It feels like, being a black male, I’ve already got this strike against me.”

He also has previous misdemeanor charges for possession of small amounts of marijuana, a fact that may make him more likely to be subject to police requests for consent searches.

Beasley has friends who work as city police officers and county sheriff’s deputies, and he trusts most police officers to do their jobs by the book. Nevertheless, he said, his nerves are on edge when a squad car is nearby because he fears he’ll encounter an officer who doesn’t play by the rules.

State data show traffic stops typically last longer for black drivers. Consent searches are requested in 2 percent of stops involving minority drivers compared with 1 percent for white drivers. Contraband is found 26 percent of the time a white driver is searched compared with 17 percent for minority drivers. For those suspicious of racial profiling, the fact that more black and Latino drivers are searched but fewer are found in possession of illegal drugs or weapons is evidence that police are searching minority drivers without cause.

Page 4 of 6 - Addressing the issue

There’s little debate over whether racial profiling is wrong. But questions remain about whether collecting racial data from traffic stops is necessary or even an effective tool in combating racial profiling where it may exist.

Illinois lawmakers initially aimed to make the data collection permanent, igniting debate on the House floor in March before the measure advanced on a split vote of 63-46. The bill was later amended by the Senate to continue the Traffic Stop Data Collection Act through 2019.

The American Civil Liberties Union supported the indefinite extension, arguing that the data is a necessary tool as police forces around the state continue to wrestle with biased policing.

“We know there are still issues that exist and need to be addressed,” ACLU spokesman Ed Yohnka said. “If you’re still combating a problem, one of the last things you’d want to do is give up one of the most effective tools for dealing with that problem.”

State Rep. John Cabello, R-Machesney Park, said the program costs too much — the state pays $120,000 a year to Alexander Weiss Consulting LLC to analyze the data and produce a report — and questioned its effectiveness.

It doesn’t account for the area that officers patrol and doesn’t distinguish whether the stop was made in daylight or in darkness when a driver’s race isn’t visible. Officers aren’t directed whether to record the ethnicity they thought the driver was before they made the stop or after, he said. It also doesn’t account for the race of the officer involved.

“If there really is a rogue officer out there and they really hate one segment of the population, do you think they’re going to be filling out those sheets in the first place?” said Cabello, a Republican with Mexican heritage.

Statewide, nonwhite drivers are 19 percent more likely to be pulled over. That’s 2 percentage points lower than the disparity in Rockford.

“The truth of the matter is we patrol more heavily in black and Latino areas in this town,” said Ald. Venita Hervey, an African American who represents Ward 5 on the city’s southwest side.

Hervey, a civil rights attorney, doesn’t think Rockford police officers practice racial profiling — but she thinks it happens in smaller communities outside the city. In those towns police “make it uncomfortable for blacks to be in their area, and they’re suspicious of you if you’re in their area,” she said.

Page 5 of 6 - She said black drivers in smaller towns in the region are often pulled over multiple times for minor infractions that don’t lead to citations, like not using a turn signal or a taillight “shorting” out.

Statewide, minority drivers are stopped more frequently for non-moving violations. Thirty-three percent of the time a nonwhite driver is pulled over, it’s for a non-moving violation like malfunctioning or improper equipment. That happens in 28 percent of stops of white motorists.

Minority drivers were involved in 34 percent of traffic stops across the state and make up 28.5 percent of the driving population, according to the Illinois Traffic Stop Study.

Disparity in stops

Almost every police agency in the Rock River Valley reports racial disparity in traffic stops. Black drivers were pulled over at rates that exceed the proportion of black residents in 11 of the 12 departments that wrote the most tickets in Winnebago, Ogle, Boone and Stephenson counties.

Researchers warn, however, that comparing the percentage of traffic stops with census data — which often don’t align — oversimplifies the tangled web of factors that leads to the disparity.

The National Institute of Justice cites several other factors to consider, including differences in driving patterns and exposure to police because of patrols in high-crime neighborhoods.

In Rockton, for example, 10 percent of traffic stops involve black drivers, but blacks make up just about 1 percent of the population.

“There’s a very simple reason: it’s called Illinois Route 2, which is a direct road from Rockford to Beloit,” Rockton Police Chief Steve Dickson said. “Then we have Route 75, which is a direct route to Freeport.”

Black drivers living in Rockford, Beloit, Freeport and other cities outside of Rockton use those roads, which means the driving population has a substantially higher number of blacks and Latinos than the town itself.

The state’s traffic study takes that into account. It factors the number of drivers coming into a town from other communities in the same county. In Winnebago County, the estimated minority driving population — calculated with census figures of those that are driving age — is about 22 percent. That is the benchmark used broadly for all communities outside Rockford. Using driving population rather than census numbers alone shows less of a disparity in a community like Rockton. About 17 percent of Rockton’s stops were of minority drivers compared with 22 percent of the county’s estimated driving population.

State data shows 23 percent of stops in Loves Park in 2012 involved minority drivers, who make up 22 percent of the county’s driving population. Loves Park Chief Rodney Scott, who became top cop in February, said he’s confident the city’s officers aren’t pulling over drivers because of their race.

Page 6 of 6 - “Every American is held to the same standard when it comes to receiving a ticket. The officer has to have probable cause,” Scott said.

Scott added that officers go through diversity training to prepare them for differences in religion and culture they’ll encounter on the job.

Winnebago County Sheriff Dick Meyers said officers should have no objection to the state’s consideration of extending the collection of data. He doesn’t suspect any local police departments of racial profiling and says they shouldn’t resist collecting data.

“Law enforcement agencies do experience problems from time to time with officers that may be abusing,” Meyers said. “I think it’s the exception, not the rule. I think around here officers are pretty darn good from all agencies, but we’re not immune to having from time to time somebody that may be causing a problem. If there’s a tool we could use to ferret that out, that’s a good thing.”